Pauli-Sparse regularised Counterdiabatic Shortcuts for Linear-Ramp QAOA

Abstract: Combinatorial optimization is a leading target for quantum algorithms, but finite-depth QAOA can suffer from strong diabatic errors when the interpolation Hamiltonian has small, or exponentially small, spectral gaps. We propose a Pauli-sparse counterdiabatic extension of linear-ramp QAOA based on the regularised adiabatic gauge potential [ \bigl(\mathcal L_H^2+ηI\bigr)A_λ^{(η)} = -\mathrm{i}\mathcal L_H(\partial_λH), \qquad \mathcal L_H(X)=[H,X]. ] Instead of computing a dense AGP, we solve this equation approximately by an inexact conjugate-gradient method in Pauli coordinates, truncating the Pauli expansion during the iteration to obtain a gate-budget-aware set of implementable rotations. The selected support is then improved by a Galerkin refit and certified by an a posteriori residual bound. The regularization parameter (η) acts as an energy-resolution scale: it suppresses transitions below (\sqrtη) while retaining larger-gap transitions. Thus, the method can avoid resolving exponentially small splittings inside a low-energy solution manifold while reducing leakage away from it. Numerical experiments on Ferromagnetic Chain (FC) and perturbed FC--MaxCut/MarketSplit instances show that the resulting LR-CD-QAOA ansatz improves approximation ratios over the uncorrected linear ramp, especially in regimes where LR-QAOA remains far from the optimum. Overall, the proposed regularized LR-CD-QAOA framework substantially broadens the practical applicability of QAOA to QUBO optimization by improving its robustness across heterogeneous problem landscapes, including instances with near-degenerate low-energy structures and small spectral gaps.